Review: Murder, Of Coarse! Canal Café Theatre

A murder mystery parody you say? Ripping off the stories of Agatha Christie with a view to “bring back radio”? Count me in.

The premise of Murder, Of Coarse! is – at least at first – simple: five actors and one director gather for a surprise reading of Christian’s (James Burgess) new play. But there are far more parts than there are actors, so doubling (and indeed tripling) is required to make it work. What’s worse, the play is comically bad and riffs off outdated stereotypes badly disguised as ‘satire’. This alone provides a wealth of entertainment. From his group of actors joking about the play opening with ‘It was a dark and stormy night’, only for the narrator to open with “It was a dark and stormy night”, to questioning the dialogue with fourth wall breaks like “That’s a strange way of talking.”

But what makes this really work for me is the absurdity of it. Philip (Jack Tivey) plays three characters in the play, but we end up with whole sections of dialogue where only his three characters interact. The action stops as they criticise the pages and pages of poorly planned doubling. The dialogue is witty, fast-paced, and pokes fun at the sort of am-dram ‘new writing’ that everyone’s had to experience at some point in their life. There are some real zingers too: when the actors compare their previous production nightmares, Colin (Niall O’Mara) notes that his “Juliet shat herself on the balcony.”

As the actors chaotically switch between a range of different roles, the audience is only helped to follow along by some very naff props and hats. It is deliberately nonsense, making it all very amusing. When we get halfway through, Becky (Alison Griffin) (who has stepped in as one of the cast but is also there in a producer capacity) gives some notes. She points out that the female characters haven’t really had any lines, and more concerningly, the director wants to split them between two actors. A hilariously defensive response follows about wanting to write more parts for women, to which the reply is “Well you actually need to write them.”

When the second half begins, we’re transported into an actual recording studio, where the budget has clearly increased, and this is illustrated with the props; all the items used in the first half – like a wooden spoon for the chef – double in size. Now, the chef has an even longer spoon. We hear ridiculous sound effects, like the overuse of thunder after every slight plot development, adding a new layer to the action.

The stage at Canal Café is exceptionally small, which makes for quite a cramped viewing. But this could also be in the production’s favour. It strikes me as being very easy to take on tour, and is exactly the sort of thing seen at the Edinburgh Fringe. However, the ending fizzles out, and the play in its current state feels like it needs more of an impactful conclusion. It’s calling out for a real plot twist, which would be very easily achieved with a slight re-write.

The joy of this play, though, is in its absurdity, with actors playing such a large number of roles that make it deliberately hard to follow. The cast are clearly having a good time on stage, and that translates. With a little bit more revision, this could be a real rival to the small number of murder mystery parodies running in the West End.

Written and Directed by: Nick Thomas
Presented by: Bar-Stood Theatre

Murder, of Coarse! runs at the Canal Café Theatre until Saturday 5 April.